Fancy footwork

Brixtonian Jane Brown talks to Shannon Denny about globetrotting, couture and her life as a cobbler

Above: Sketches by couture cobbler Jane Brown, who is a Brixton resident

When hearing the story of luxury label Jane Brown Shoes, it’s easy to develop a sudden taste for travel. Reflecting on her eponymous brand at home in Brixton, Jane’s conversation flies rapidly from the Far East to Europe to Africa, meandering through the East End, the West End and south London along the way.

Born in Cyprus, Jane moved with her family to Singapore when she was young. It was here that the fascination with what we put on our feet began. "My mother used to take me and my sisters into the little local village," she remembers. "All our shoes were handmade for us. So I used to sit in these tiny little shops full of local Singaporean Chinese cutting uppers and putting beautiful little punched details onto shoes. I got to choose the leather and the colour. Sometimes I would say, ‘Could I have a shiny pair of red t-bars?’ And I watched them do it.

"We would sit and chat and my mother would drink tea with them," she continues. "So as a very little girl I realised quite how logical and how simple it all is, but there’s a great to skill to it as well." A transfer back to the British Isles added a different nuance to the passion that would later develop into her career. "We then moved to Scotland," she says, "and I spent the rest of my childhood riding horses and cleaning tack and loving that whole leather thing. It sounds weird, but that had an impact."

After school and university in Scotland, Jane went to visit a friend in Kenya. There she met the man who would later become her husband, and so she promptly moved to Africa and secured a fantastic job as conference organiser for the UN.

But even the UN couldn’t prevent her from pursuing her true calling. "I was reading a magazine in Nairobi once and it talked about Cordwainers College in Hackney in London. And so I immediately thought, ‘That’s it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to run my own business, I’m going to make shoes and I will live happily ever after,’" she recounts. "Pathetically naïve, but I wrote to them. And they wrote back and said if you want you can come in September.’"

She makes the adjustment from equatorial East Africa to industrial east London sound easy. "I went to Cordwainers for two years which I where I got my really proper shoe education." she says. "Alongside that I went every week to John Lobb’s bookmakers in St James’s and they taught me how to make lasts, which is probably one of the most important things that I ever learnt." It is the skill of last making that make Jane’s shoes so exceptionally comfortable, enduring and elegant.

Following an acclaimed debut collection in 1997, her client list has grown steadily to feature a host of A-listers such as Madonna, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burroughs, Monica Belucci, Marianne Faithfull, Danielle Steele, Dido and Liberty Ross, and she has designed catwalk and collection shoes for leading London fashion designers including Alice Temperley, Ben Di Lisi and Tracey Boyd.

Not all her time is spent in the most exalted ateliers in London though. "We bought a big house in Brixton because it was affordable then and I knew that I wanted to have children and work from home. We were lucky enough to find a great house very close to Brixton Market. I work from a studio inside the house and we’ve got a bigger office three minutes away."

As a result, her kids are growing up with almost as cosmopolitan an upbringing as she had. They spend time in Dulwich Park, eat Thai curry at Lombok in Herne Hill, shop at Tales in Moon Lane, see films at the Ritzy and seek out suppers ranging from Japanese to Rastafarian in the streets near their home.

Meanwhile, their mother seeks inspiration from all over London – influence comes from such assorted sources as shapes of cars, clothing design (Lanvin, Balenciaga, Marni and Azzarro are favourites), wandering around, movies and then news. "If you keep your eyes and ears open to what’s going on the world, this extraordinary picture builds up," she says of her method for creating a collection.

Future plans include the relaunch of the Jane Brown Shoes website to allow online retail sales, building the wholesale business and searching for premises for a new shop. As the pace picks up, this summer will see her passport will get a serious workout, with constant travel to Italy (where the principal Jane Brown line is manufactured) and Spain (where her luxury diffusion Bacarolle range is made).

Although such an itinerary means her feet barely touch the ground, it’s not surprising that she’s got an enviable personal shoe collection that she describes apologetically as "massive" and "vast". "I’ve got shoes coming out of my bedroom," she admits mournfully. "Easily, I’ve got 310 pairs."

Her current favourites? A pair of buffalo leather ballerina pumps with a sprinkling of jewels and stones that she wears with shorts and jeans. "I like the contrast of grainy, rough buffalo leather with jewels on top," she reveals. For this glamorous designer and mum who’s always on the run, it seems a perfect choice.